Aniversario de Romero y la Boda

¡Hola Amigos!
Ever since spring break I’ve been incredibly busy. My family came to visit for four days at the end of break. I was excited to have them here and I had a good visit with them. We went to Suchitoto, the beach, and I showed them around San Salvador. In Mariona we had a fiesta to celebrate their visit.

On Friday, the Casa students got to have a special meeting with Robert White, the former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador during the war. He told us that if the U.S. hadn’t intervened, the civil war in El Salvador would have been very, very short and the current ARENA party would not be in office. He also said the gang situation wouldn’t exist now and the government wouldn’t be as corrupt if the U.S. had stayed out of the war. White said that it is one thing to have power, but if you don’t use it for good then power means nothing. Despite popular American belief about the war in El Salvador, White said the revolution was justified and that it had nothing to do with Communism. The fight was against decades of injustice. He admitted that the news is skewed and stressed the importance of turning off the TV news and actually doing research to find the real truth.

Saturday was the 17th Romero Anniversary and there were festivities all day. At 4pm we all joined the march to the Cathedral. On the way we stopped and said five Stations of the Cross. The march was beautiful. People were waving Romero banners, carrying candles, singing, and yelling “¡Vive Romero!” Once we got to the Cathedral where Romero is buried there was a huge mass. It seemed like the whole country was there to celebrate the life of Romero.

Sunday was Gene (our history teacher) and Lupita’s (one of the Casa cooks) wedding. Casa students were in charge of the decorations and I was on the decorating committee (since I’m an experienced wedding coordinator). We worked long hours all week making streamers, center pieces, a banner, and casamiento (beans and rice that you throw on the bride and groom when they leave the Church. It’s called casamiento because the beans and rice come together in a “marriage”). Since Gene and Lupita know pretty much everyone, there were 400 people at the wedding. That means we had to make a lot of decorations for all the tables. The wedding began at 11:30am, and we starting setting up at 9am. It took us so long to move tables and set up that we arrived late to the wedding and had to rush to decorate the Church. Luckily, like all good brides, Lupita was late so we had plenty of time to set up. The theme was blue and white, El Salvador’s colors. The wedding was beautiful and the reception was so much fun. There was a live band and great food. We knew a lot of the people at the wedding so it was fun talking to everyone. We also danced all afternoon. This was pretty much the wedding of the year.

Paz,
Stephanie